A home testing kit for coronavirus could be developed for use in Scotland, the country’s chief medical officer said.
Dr Catherine Calderwood said the potential dipstick test is not available yet, but early talks with commercial firms are under way.
She revealed the move at an official briefing in Edinburgh on the latest spread of the Covid-19 virus.
“Very live discussions are to rapidly introduce new types of testing which would look at antibodies produced to coronavirus,” she said.
“That would hopefully be a very simple dipstick test - it’s not available yet - we’re in early, early, discussions with commercial companies about producing that test. That would allow that mass testing.
“It doesn’t rely on laboratory capacity - people would do it at home with a simple kit and they would have that information as to whether they have positive antibodies, therefore have had coronavirus and can go back to work and not isolate themselves, or whether that testing needs to be repeated, which will be our eventual aim. We may end up asking people to take this test several times.”
Dr Calderwood said she had just had a meeting about the potential test before appearing at a press conference in Edinburgh.
Describing the current approach, she said anyone admitted to hospital with respiratory symptoms suggesting Covid-19 will be tested and contacts traced.
“For key front line workers, they are priority,” she said.
Dr Calderwood said Scotland is well prepared for testing but labs will struggle with rapid increase in numbers.
“In the UK we have the best capacity for testing almost anywhere in the world,” she said.
“We have the ability to test more people per head of population than other countries. However, with the numbers as they increase, our lab capacity cannot keep up. It does at the moment but it will not by the time we're having tens of thousands affected every day.”
The latest official update on Wednesday afternoon revealed 227 positive cases and a third death from coronavirus in Scotland.
